Thursday, September 29, 2016

A man on Facebook sent me 5 Glass Gem Corn seeds last winter. In May I planted them in a circle in the garden. Since there were so few seeds, sometimes if you plant them that way, you still get decent pollination. It worked! I picked 13 ears of corn this afternoon. This is a kind of popcorn, and can be ground for cornmeal as well. I am going to hang it up and let it dry thoroughly before I try to pop or grind it. It's so pretty! I've looked at other pictures of the Glass Gem Corn online and they are even prettier! By the way, there really was no insect damage to these, whereas my sweet corn had many corn ear worms this year. The plants are very tall, and since I only had 5 seeds and got 13 ears, obviously they are quite prolific. It is an open-pollinated variety. Here is a picture of my little harvest:

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

I don't wash out the jar I keep my sourdough starter in very often, but eventually, it becomes somewhat crunchy looking. Here is what I like to do when I have extra sourdough starter. I poured off the "hootch" that was in the jar (the dark liquid that accumulates after I neglect it for several days) and then dumped the remainder into a bowl. After carefully washing the jar and lid, I added some water to it, because it was now too thick, and stirred that in and then took 1/3 cup of that and returned it to the clean jar. Next, I added 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and about 1/3 cup water and stirred that altogether in the jar, put on the lid and returned it to the refrigerator.

What was left in the bowl was about 1.5 cups of leftover sourdough starter. To that, I added:

Then I stirred it all well. In the meantime, I had my Belgian waffle-maker heating up. When it was up to temperature, I baked the waffles by adding 1/2 cup of the batter each time. On my iron, the device is heated enough when the light on the top goes out. After adding the batter, the light will come back on and then turn off again when the waffle is done and I remove it and start another one.

Of course, this could also be made into pancakes!

These waffles are delicious and it is a good way NOT to waste that extra sourdough starter.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Blogger is changing things soon. If I want to link something to my blog posts, I will have to type in the whole web address. :( Anyway... just thought I'd mention it in case you have a favorite link on here, you might want to save it.

Here is Bloggers message.

By September 29, 2016, the Search Box gadget on this blog will only present search results from this blog. Search results from pages linked in your posts, from the Web or from the Blog List and Link List gadgets will not be presented anymore.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

We bought a Food Saver and the jar sealer accessories and today I sealed all the jars of dehydrated foods that I've been able to put up this year. Until I got it all organized, I had no idea how much there is and I'm very grateful! Can you imagine how much this would be if the foods had not been dried? A Lot. It covers the bottom shelf in this cupboard and there are 3 rows of jars on the second shelf.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

I originally posted this nearly 4 years ago. Today is September 1st, so I am thinking now would be the time to replace zippers in any coats or jackets that need it, before the snow flies!

Here you can see a perfectly good jacket. The problem is, the zipper is broken! Replacing a zipper is really not difficult, but it is tedious and takes considerable time. If your coat/jacket is nice, and/or you love it, it is more than worth the trouble to replace the zipper.

Here is the zipper I ordered over the internet here. This company is wonderful. They have everything and excellent customer service!

A closer look at the invoice:

The zipper I purchased cost $6.03 including the shipping, and so for a nice coat, you can see that this would really be worthwhile.

Now, don't be afraid. Breath. Relax. Here we go.

FIRST ~ set your sewing machine to its longest stitch length. Sew a line of stitching along the jacket opening, far enough in from the edge that you do NOT catch in the existing zipper. This is to hold everything together nicely and make the reassembly easier. Do this on both sides of the jacket.

Here I am doing the same thing on the other side:

SECOND ~ take your little seam ripper and do (carefully and don't stab yourself) whatever it takes to remove the broken zipper:

Here I've gone a little farther in the process:

Here I am removing some stitching from the surface:

And here is what it looks like with the zipper removed. Now you will see the wisdom of doing that basting line of stitches so the jacket doesn't blow up and get all weird.

THIRD ~ carefully remove all the bits of loose thread:

FOURTH ~ Thread a sturdy hand sewing needle with a doubled thread and run it through some beeswax so it will be less likely to tangle while you are sewing. Rosin will work instead of the beeswax, too, or if you have neither, find a piece of candle or even hand soap to use!

FIFTH ~ I hope you took the time to observe how the old zipper was positioned. You are going to unzip the new zipper, and one side at a time, you will put the new zipper in, and pin it in place and then hand baste it in place:

See? Here is one side basted together:

And here is the other side:

Oh, yes, and it is very helpful to have a fuzzy cat walking around under your work table at this point:

SIXTH ~ Before you sew the zipper in with your machine, zip up the jacket to make sure it is going to work!

SEVENTH ~ Now, simply, using a normal stitch length, sew along the same line where the old zipper was sewn in like this:

Make sure to replace any seams or stitching you have removed:

Be sure to remove any basting stitches. On this one, there was the nice little tab on the old zipper, so I just transferred it to the new one:

That's all you need to do! Even if it doesn't turn out perfectly, it is better than throwing away a perfectly good coat.